I’m taking a test in my Biology 102 class. The last question is an essay question on fungi. I’ve been fascinated by mushrooms since I was a kid, and I know A LOT about them. I fill the space provided and then the back of the page. Finding no more space in which I can write, I go up to the professor and ask for a sheet of paper.

Professor: “Why do you need some paper?”

Me: “I’m not done writing my answer to the last question.”

Professor: “Yes, you are.”

[Big Boss] is the chairperson of the university department I work in. Personally, he is generally nice and can be very generous, but he has a cheap streak when it comes to spending on supplies and infrastructure.

One day, I get a call from an admin person.

Admin: “[Big Boss] is upset about how much money we are spending on printing — paper and toner. He thinks there’s a lot of waste and we need to cut back.”

Me: “Okay. How much are we spending?”

Admin: “I don’t know, but [Big Boss] came in early one day, found a stack of pages in the copier out tray, and blew a gasket. So, can you find out how much we are spending?”

It turned out that it was pretty easy. We bought all our paper from a single campus source, so it was easy to dig that up. We had a contract for our big copier/printer, so that was easy to find, and I did all the purchasing for toner for the desktop printers we had scattered around, so I had those records. In a couple of hours, I had a year’s worth of data and gave it to [Admin] and [Big Boss].

From this, he instituted a couple of changes. Everyone had to have a code for the copier so we could track individual usage. This was a great idea; it turned out that we had some students who were sneaking in on weekends and copying entire textbooks when electronic copies weren’t available. [Big Boss] also wanted me to set up print logging by user so we could figure out who the big “printer hogs” were.

I hadn’t done this before, but we used a Linux print server, so I found out what packages I needed and set it up. At the end of the month, I dumped the print log information and had it nicely outputted, ready to be stuck on a webpage of shame if need be.

And to no one’s surprise, the project stopped there. [Big Boss] was far and away the greatest print user in the department; he printed twice as many pages as the next highest person on the list. As the chairperson, some of this was surely proper, but I also knew he liked to print personal stuff. A lot.

So, we ended up NOT putting the information up on our website — at least until he rotated out of being the chairperson.

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

When you use the voice-to-text feature on a phone, it usually gets some words wrong in an understandable way. This is the story of the best (and worst) voice-to-text error I’ve ever seen.

I used to take classes at the University of Washington, or UW. People would commonly pronounce the name “U-Dub” rather than saying the whole thing. One day, I was just leaving a class at a secondary campus in a smaller town called Bothell.

I texted my husband to tell him where to meet me. He was already driving, so his phone read out my text to him, and he replied using voice-to-text.

Husband: *To his phone* “Okay, I’m coming to pick you up at U-dub Bothell.”

Text I Received: “Okay, I’m coming to pick you up and you are awful.”

Fortunately, I knew right away it was a mistake, and we had a great laugh about it when he got there and I showed him how the text had turned out!

During a summer session at the university I attended, one of the students organized a trip to nearby Lassen Volcanic National Park. The park is at a relatively high elevation, and the organizer did not realize that this meant that, even in late June, much of the snow would still not be melted.

When we attempted to visit the geothermally active area called “Bumpass Hell,” which features mud pots, boiling springs, and fumaroles, we found that the trailhead was inaccessible, blocked by about a foot and a half of snow.

When we returned to the school, we were able to report, in all honesty, “We tried to go to Hell, but it was closed because it had frozen over.”

I work at a college. The school has just opened a new parking lot.

Biology Professor: “I decided to park in the new lot, and get this: they left a huge rock right next to the entrance. I almost swiped it when I pulled in. I’m going to ask facilities to remove it.”

After lunch:

Biology Professor: “Well, I went out for lunch, and the rock was already gone! Guess I’m not the only one who noticed. Honestly, I should have more faith in [School].”

A little later, a student bursts into the office.

Student: “Hey, [Biology Professor]! Know anything about snapping turtles? There’s a huge one wandering around the new lot and security doesn’t know how to make it move!”

After the turtle has been evicted:

Biology Professor: “I just put two and two together. The rock that wasn’t there… The snapping turtle… I don’t have faith in [School] anymore.”

Me: “You’re the one who thought it was a rock!”

Biology Professor: “Fine. I also don’t have faith in my optometrist.”